The third entry in the “9-1-1” franchise, “9-1-1: Nashville,” is set to premiere in October and the seventh installment in the NCIS franchise, “NCIS: Tony & Ziva,” just premiered this month. Is the rapid proliferation of procedural spinoffs an indicator that their creators have cracked the code on a winning formula or is there a risk that these franchises will reach a saturation point and begin to see diminishing returns?
There is no doubt that the procedural format has successfully made the transition from its linear origins to the streaming era. Shows like “NCIS” and “Criminal Minds” have paid dividends for the platforms they are on. Parrot Analytics’ Streaming Economics model calculates that since 2020, the original “NCIS” series itself has brought in nearly $200M in streaming revenue globally for Netflix alone.
Procedurals are known for long tail value because of huge episode libraries. With more than two decades of back catalog, the financial calculation of “NCIS” is different from a “9-1-1.” A newer franchise with fewer spinoffs like “9-1-1” may be more in growth mode, and looking to bring new audiences to the franchise. For “NCIS,” the most impactful move may be to draw in proven fans of the franchise to a platform where they will find essentially a bottomless supply of old “NCIS” episodes to stream, an effective asset for retaining them once they are signed on.
We can see how “9-1-1: Lone Star” made inroads with new audiences that were not engaged with the original series. Of the total audience of the original “9-1-1,” 8% was under age 32. But “Lone Star” was more successful in breaking through with younger audiences, with nearly 55% of the spinoff’s audience younger than 32. “Lone Star” also did a better job bringing in male audiences compared to the original series, where 74% of the audience was female.
Contrast this with the NCIS franchise which has had, consistently across six series, over 70% of its audience over the age of 30. Has doubling down on its core audience hit a ceiling for “NCIS?” Last year’s premiere of “NCIS: Origins” saw some of the highest demand for a new series premiere in the franchise, averaging over 20 times the average series demand globally over the course of its first season. So far, “Tony & Ziva” is significantly lagging that with less than 5x demand globally to date.
But don’t count the latest NCIS entry out yet. Even if it is only engaging a smaller audience of the most devoted NCIS fans, if it can get them to sign up to Paramount+, they will encounter a powerful retention engine there in the extended NCIS franchise, which has the potential to turn them into high lifetime value customers for the platform. To put a number on it, we calculate that in the first quarter, the NCIS franchise as a whole was responsible for retaining over 1.6M subscribers on Paramount+ globally. These fans are likely to stick around — the trick is getting them signed up in the first place.
